Fiber Freeze: How Maple Grove Made a Cable Franchise the Price of Broadband
The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Build America Agenda rests on a simple premise: Stop making it so hard to build. Federal and state policymakers have spent years reducing permitting delays, resolving pole-attachment disputes, and easing access to public rights-of-way—the public corridors used for infrastructure such as roads, utility poles, and fiber lines. These obstacles slow infrastructure deployment and raise its cost. Yet even as the federal government removes regulatory barriers, local governments often march briskly in the opposite direction.
That is the story unfolding in Maple Grove, Minnesota. The city has told a fiber provider that it cannot use public rights-of-way until it signs a cable television franchise, the local authorization traditionally required to operate a cable system. Never mind that the company provides broadband over fiber, not cable television.
The city’s demand is almost certainly unlawful. By imposing these requirements to raise revenue, Maple Grove is undercutting federal policy and making it harder for residents to obtain high-speed broadband.